Search Results for "moody"
Moody Bust sculpted during 1919 Flu Pandemic
Posted by: | CommentsHermon MacNeil sculpted this bust of Dwight L. Moody a century ago during the Flu Pandemic of 1919.
One hundred years later (In 2019), I visited that MacNeil work in Sage Chapel on site at the Moody’s Northfield Seminary.
The photo below records that visit. ↓

Dwight L. Moody by Hermon MacNeil (1919). The century-old work rests Sage Chapel on site at the Moody’s Northfield Seminary.
On June 6, 1919, Northfield paid Honors to Moody at the 40th Anniversary Celebration of Founder’s Day in East Northfield, Mass.
The four days of celebration included:
- A Reception at the home of Principal C. E. Dickerson, Tuesday evening, marked the close of the commencement exercises and celebration of the 40th anniversary of the funding of Northfield Seminary.
- The Reunion of nearly five hundred former students and friends returned to Northfield.
- The occasion honored the founder, Dwight L. Moody.
- Moody’s youngest granddaughter, Margaret Moody, unveiled the portrait bust by pulling the draping off of her grandfather’s bronze likeness.
- Little Margaret is the daughter of Chaplain Paul D. Moody, son of D. L. Moody and Head of Chaplains for the Allied Expeditionary Force (A.E.F).
- The bust is the gift of the alumnae and has graced Sage Memorial Chapel for over a century.
- Hermon MacNeil of New York sculpted the bust from a pencil drawing he made of Mr. Moody when the evangelist was in the vigor of his powers and from a death mask provided by the school.
- MacNeil made the sketches at The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. Moody organized Sunday worship services held in the stadium built by William Cody for his “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.” NO SUNDAY SHOWS were allowed at the Fair. So, Moody rented it from Cody on Sundays and packed it with fair attenders and local pastors and their congregationschurch
- It was presented by Mrs. Helen M. Williams of New York City, President of the board of trustees of the Northfield schools. Another token of the esteem in which Northfield graduates hold their alma mater was the gift of $600 from the class of 1914.
This digital file of the article from the September 1919 issue of the Northfield Alumnae Chronicle is a treasure trove of background information.
- The bust was a gift of the Alumnae Association. Many small donations.
- Johnson’s presentation speech cites conversations with MacNeil. It is a wonderful piece of Northfield history and affection for Mr. Moody 20 years after his death. .
- MacNeil attended one of D. L. Moody’s Meetings in Chicago ( MacNeil was there between 1890-95).
- MacNeil made a hasty sketch of Moody at that meeting. He kept his sketch for years.
- MacNeil created the bust of Moody and afterward told the alumnae (Mrs. Johnson (?)) the story of making the sketch.
- The bust was presented at a service in Sage Chapel.
SOURCES:
- Lost New England (retrieved 4-17-2021) [https://lostnewengland.com/category/massachusetts/northfield-massachusetts/]
East Northfield, Mass. June 6, (1919) - ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE. Saturday, June 7, 1919

Bust of Dwight L. Moody, Evangelist, made by MacNeil in 1920 for the Mount Hermon Academy in Northfield, assachusetts
At age 78 Hermon MacNeil wrote an autobiographical sketch in June 1943 from his home in College Point. A copy of it is in the MacNeil Papers at the Cornell Library Archives. My sister, Melba, found a copy in mother’s family files.
Only 13 typed pages in length, MacNeil’s Sketches provides brief reflections on his life and a listing of his sculptures. The list catalogues 42 pieces that he made in his nearly fifty years as a sculptor. One very brief entry says simply:
“D. L. Moody. Northfield University, Mass., 1920”
MacNeil’s mention of a sculpture of D. L. Moody was my first awareness that he had ever done such a piece.
Searching the internet I found TWO photos (one on the right and another larger one below). They both come from the Northfield Mount Hermon (Click HERE) website. The school is a merger of the two academies for poor and underprivileged children (one for girls and one for boys) that Moody founded in 1879 and 1881. A brief history of the school can be found on Wikipedia. [Click Here].
MORE below photo:

“Dwight L. Moody” 1920 – A bust by Hermon Atkins MacNeil now graces the campus of Northfield Mount Hermon academy in Massachusetts. The school is a merger of the two separate academies (one for girls and one for boys) that Moody founded in 1879 and 1881
While I await confirmation from NMH, this undoubtedly appears to be the work referenced by Hermon in his autobiograhical sketches as a 78 year old man. While finding ‘undiscovered’ works by Hermon MacNeil over the last 3 years, has been one recurring delight of building this website, I never cease to be amazed when I find one. This particular discovery seems amazing for several reasons:
- Both of my Parents (Rev. Louis Lee Leininger, Sr. and Ollie McNeil Leininger) attended Moody Bible institute in Chicago in 1926-28.
- I never heard my parents ever mention this sculpture.
- If my mother knew of “Uncle Hermon’s” bust of Dr. Moody, she would have mentioned it , repeatedly!
- To my knowledge, my parents never visited in Massachusetts, never saw, or ever knew of this piece.
- This is a one of a kind piece. Thus hard to find in a private school. Not known to the general public.
- I have no information on how it was commissioned, or how Hermon MacNeil became connected with this project.
STAY TUNED ! There has got to be MORE. I will let you know as soon as I find it.
ENJOY these lovely close-ups from the NMH website!!!
MacNeil Christmas Cards
Posted by: | CommentsHermon MacNeil often made Christmas Cards that featured his own drawings and studio images.
Here’s a Card from 1922 ==>>
This pencil sketch proclaiming “Merry Christmas 1922” appears reminiscent of MacNeil’s “Sun Vow”
In that composition, a Native Chief, possibly Sioux, coaches a young warrior through a rite of passage — shooting an arrow into the of the sun.
In MacNeil’s 1922 Christmas drawing, a similar pair of figures wave a banner of seasons greetings. Their presence seems a reprise of the Sun Vow sculpture.
While that was over a century ago, here’s what we can know today:
- We know being an artist, MacNeil often carried and kept sketchbooks.
- We know he would sit in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair with his sketchbook.
- We know he sketched D. L Moody at an interdenominational Sunday Worship in Wild Bill’s Arena (since no Sunday shows were allowed and Moody rented the venue).
- We know he traveled, sketched and sculpted on his trip to the Southwest territories in 1895 (New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado).
- We know he formed clay and plaster images there; and he shipped many back to Chicago.
- We know that his memory of Native images dominated his sculptures for the next ten years.
I suspect that the idea for this card sprang up from the artist’s visual memory, perhaps, revived from an old sketchbook. A dusty record of images that he first saw three decades earlier at the Worlds Columbian Exposition of 1893.
Here’s More from this website:
“Native American Themes: His first introduction to native subjects came through Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. During the 1893 Worlds Fair, Buffalo Bill’s troupe performed in a carnival setting outside the main entrance. Fascinated, MacNeil’s artist-eye and imagination took every opportunity to see the show and sketch the ceremonies and rituals of Indian life — MacNeil often carried a sketch book. He latter befriended Black Pipe, a Sioux warrior from the show, who he found down-and-out on the Chicago streets after the carnival midways of the Fair had closed. MacNeil invited Black Pipe to model for him and assist in studio labors, which he did for over a year. Inspired by these native subjects and encouraged by Edward Everett Ayers, MacNeil found a respect for this vanishing Native culture and made subsequent trips to the southwest. When the Marquette Building was constructed, MacNeil was awarded a commission to complete Four Bas Relief Panels of over the main entrance. His work depicts four scenes from Marquette’s trip through the Great Lakes region.”
“In the summer of 1895, along with Hamlin Garland (a writer) and C. F. Browne (a painter), he traveled to the four-corners territories (now, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah) seeing American Indians (Navajo, and Moqui — now Hopi) in their changing cultural element on various reservations. While there, he was asked to sculpt, out of available materials, a likeness of Chief Manuelito. The Navajo warrior had died in despair after being imprisoned for four years as a renegade by the U. S. Government (Col. Kit Carson) twenty-five years earlier. Manuelito’s likeness (click here), made of available materials, brought tears to his widow’s eyes, and remains an object of cultural pride in Gallup, New Mexico to this day.” SOURCE: Click HERE
Hermon MacNeil Featured in “The Galley”
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Dan Leininger holds the “Galley” for Summer 2014 with MacNeil’s “Pony Express” statue on the cover and an 8 page feature story inside.
“Clan MacNeil Connections and Hermon Atkins MacNeil”
The current issue of the Clan MacNeil Association of America magazine has a feature story on Hermon Atkins MacNeil by webmaster, Dan Leininger
The Galley edited by Vicki Sanders Corporon titles Dan’s story as “Clan MacNeil Connections and Hermon Atkins MacNeil.” The feature and photos fill 8 pages in the “Galley” issue for Spring/Summer 2014.

Ezra Cornell statue at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY was dedicated in 1918 after WWI. Page 19 of the “Galley” (This Photo from Cornell University is Courtesy of Chris Carlsen).
The featured photos include the East Pediment of the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. (with a detail close-up of Moses, Confucius, and Salon); The George Rogers Clark monument in Vincennes, IN at the site of his victory over the British in 1779; Confederate Defenders of Charleston, SC; the Young Lawyer Abraham Lincoln in Champaign, IL; General George Washington on the Washington Arch, NYC, NY. Also in this article are photos of the grouping Coming of the White Man in Portland, OR; The WWI Angel of Peace Monument in Flushing NY; and a bust of Dwight L. Moody (who MacNeil sketched during the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair.